


La Belle Dame Sans Regrets

by BellaKatrina



Series: La Belle Dame [1]
Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 11:11:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellaKatrina/pseuds/BellaKatrina
Summary: Tasha will never regret that night. No matter what, she'll never speak or even think of regret. Oh, she regrets the circumstances that led to it, the shit and horrors that Reade had gone through that had led them to that point, but she refuses to regret anything else, to regret the comfort they'd managed to give each other in the quietest, darkest hours in the dead of night when he'd reached out for a hand to hold and she'd ended up giving him a bit more than that.





	La Belle Dame Sans Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> AU version of the end of Season 2, where things go slightly differently the night they watch the video in S2 E18 "Senile Lines".

Tasha will never regret that night.

No matter what, she'll never speak or even think of regret. Oh, she regrets the circumstances that led to it, the shit and horrors that Reade had gone through that had led them to that point, but she refuses to regret anything else, to regret the comfort they'd managed to give each other in the quietest, darkest hours in the dead of night when he'd reached out for a hand to hold and she'd ended up giving him quite a bit more than that.

He's still her best friend, she's still his; they make a point of making sure that things didn't get awkward or weird. It won't happen again, or maybe it’s more honest to admit that it hasn't happened again _yet_, but they've not transitioned to lovers or a couple or even friends with benefits. Nothing between them has changed. And if it has, they’re doing their absolute best to pretend it hasn’t.

Very little's changed at all, honestly, in the weeks since.

Reade's not changed, not really, but a few of his habits have. He's still fundamentally Reade, just a Reade that's not completely falling apart like he has been for the last half year. She believes him when he tells her that he's started seeing a competent therapist and attending NA meetings, because she can see the difference. He's lighter somehow, in a way that she can't quite describe. He's still not back on the team, but she can see that he's got the right mindset to be able to come back at some point in the distant future.

He's barely a month clean, and she's still terrified it won't last.

She's not changed, either, not really, not in the ways that matter. Not in the ways that have to matter. She's still doing her job to the best of her abilities, the exemplar FBI special agent. She's still doing her best to hold everyone else together, professionally and personally.

She's officially Weller's number two, the lieutenant to his general, no matter how often he overlooks her and turns to Jane instead. She's the one that pulls together the support teams that back them in the field, the one that handles the paperwork he can't be bothered with. She's the one that handles all the logistics that he used to handle when he was Mayfair's number two, just a year ago.

It seems longer.

Each day feels like a lifetime now.

They all seem so much older, and it was only a year difference.

She's Jane's unofficial confessor and confidant, her friend, in a way her mother figure – she's the one that gently chides the other woman about getting enough sleep, eating right, not putting too much pressure on her brother. She's the older sister, helping Jane figure out makeup and hair styling and this crazy little thing called love, teasing her about Weller at the same time that she's helping push Jane towards Weller, helping her figure out how to move on from her first time being dumped. She still can’t figure out what the hell Oliver was thinking, but she’s not going to complain about it; anything that pushes Jane and Weller together is good in her opinion.

She's playing a similar role for Patterson, because clearly her long-time friend and co-worker no longer can keep it together without help. She hugs Patterson tightly to her after bad therapy sessions, comes over to her apartment and cleans up the mess and orders new pillows and other replacement items, and holds her hand during long, sleepless nights when Patterson's too terrified to close her eyes without someone watching over her. When Patterson says that she'll never be able to trust a man again, much less love one, she's the one that reminds Patterson of how she trusts Weller with her life every single day. She almost says something about how Patterson trusts Roman to continue improving, to continue shining with his love for Jane, but something causes her to bite her tongue and stay quiet; Patterson's clearly not ready to talk about whatever weirdness she has going on with him. She also stays quiet about how Patterson had loved and trusted David; she knows all too well how _that_ conversation would end. She's also the one drying Patterson's inevitable tears during those talks.

She's one of four, the only four in the _world_ still standing between Shepherd and her insane plans and her Phase II, whatever the hell that is.

Reade's no longer active FBI, and while he'd love to help them now that he's seeing things more clearly, he's not welcome in the field right now.

Nas is gone; no one expects her to be back, given the political implications.

Roman's useful at times, but he's not considered a front-line soldier against Shepherd. She and Weller don’t trust him enough. He's not one of them, not really, and Tasha worries he's going to flip on them as soon as one of them slips and accidentally informs him that Shepherd's _not_ the one that ZIP'd him.

Cade's god-only-knows-where, hiding in some foxhole like a coward, but she can't blame him for that, it's a smart decision.

Rich would probably help, if any of them trusted him enough to ask, but he's not a fighter either. Tash thinks that if they would turn Rich loose on Shepherd that the odds would be 50:50 on Shepherd giving herself up in less than a day or shooting Rich in the same time frame, but if she’s going to use Rich to annoy someone into submission, she’s going to use him against Weller if he continues being stubborn about Jane. 

It's the four of them, Weller, Jane, Patterson, and her. They're all that's left.

She's responsible for 25% of the burden, but it feels like a much higher portion, shouldering the entire emotional weight for the team. However, even a mere quarter of the responsibility for stopping Shepherd from doing whatever she’s up to is a heady task. If she lets herself think about it too much, she wants to hide under her bed until the bad bogeywoman goes away.

She's also pregnant.

Tasha will never regret that night.

No matter what, she'll never speak or even think of regret about what happened between them and the comfort she was able to give and to receive, but she sure as hell regrets not thinking of protection, not thinking of Plan B, not thinking this could possibly be an outcome.

But here she is, four weeks out from that night, two weeks late, two boroughs away from home so that she doesn't run into anyone she knows, standing in the middle of the aisle in the middle of the night, debating if she should even bother wasting money on a home test. This is one of those things that she just knows, the knowledge like a bolt from out of the blue. Her periods are timed perfection at this point; she should have ovulated that day they watched the video, the day that they both needed the comfort that only the other could give. He's the only one in the last six months. Her body's starting to change, starting with the lack of period and some dizziness and ending with a tenderness in her breasts she's never felt before and a perpetual exhaustion she can't shake and that she can't blame on the job.

There's not a doubt in her mind, and a taking that test will only make things suddenly more _real_ in a way that she's not ready to deal with quite yet.

There's also not a doubt in her mind about what she _has_ to do, test taking aside.

She's one of _four_. One of four out of however billions there are on the planet. She’s responsible for stopping Shepherd, no matter what else is going on. Her team _needs_ her. A team of three won't be functional, nor will a team of four and some growing fraction.

She'd be able to hide it for a while, but Jane and Patterson are too observant for her to hide for long, and she knows she'd be more hesitant, less willing to do her job properly. They'd all notice. Patterson would insist on going into the field in her place, leaving Tasha to stay behind to run comms. Jane would do more and more desperately reckless things in the field to make up for her absence.

As soon as he found out, Weller would bench her and take her completely off the case, not even letting her work on it in Patterson's lab. If he didn't, Pellington would. Tasha knows this without a doubt, because despite the fact that they need her, she works with good men who follow the rules to the letters, and the rules are very clear on this circumstance. The FBI is not like the Marshals, but even saying that, Tash knows for a fact Allie did her best to hide her pregnancy as long as she could because she didn’t want to be benched.

At some point, Reade would insist – as would the doctors and everyone else – that she'd have to take a leave of absence, and they'd force her into an early maternity leave, not even letting her do paperwork and run logistics or answer the phone or _anything._

A team made up of just Weller, Jane, and Patterson won't work as well; this is also something she knows without a doubt. But she's one of four, and she won't let them be a team of three as long as she's still alive.

If it were up to her, if Shepherd and her missiles weren't a threat, if they lived in a more perfect world where they didn't battle corruption and criminals and conspiracies inked on Jane's skin, chasing down one tattoo at a time, things would be different. She's certain of that.

She's thought about it all the nights she's not been able to sleep.

She'd barge into Reade's apartment, help herself to some ridiculously healthy snack out of his ridiculously healthy fridge, rest her hand on her stomach, wait until he'd said something about her bizarre change in eating habits, and then make some snarky comment about how that little part of him inside of her must be responsible. He'd make a joke about it not being so little, and she'd just cock an eyebrow and let him stumble to the right conclusion.

They'd wait a few months, just to make sure everything's okay, an ingrained superstition she's never had to think about following before, and then she'd make a crack to her grandmother about how her reproductive system hadn't dried up completely, it still had a little life left in it, and wait for her family to get the joke and celebrate with her and Reade.

She'd never flinch at the thought of a miniature Reade, a little girl with his sarcasm and her love of snark and her eyes and hair, a little boy with her nose and his ears and their shared love of football. Yes, it's nothing she would have sought on purpose, but she wouldn't have thought twice about carrying Reade's child.

And as much as she wants to pretend that’s nothing’s changed between them, she has to admit to herself that she won’t think twice about carrying another child of his at some safer time in the future, albeit one that she’s going to plan for with him rather than forgetting protection again. Now that she's had this taste of what could be, she wants it worse than anything she's ever wanted before.

But she's one of four, things _aren't_ different, and she can't think twice about it now either.

There's a clinic across town that she knows of, one that stays open late and on weekends, one where she'll blend in with the crowd, where she'll be another faceless woman telling the overworked yet still kind doctor that she can't do this, can't bring a baby into this world. It'll be the truth; she _can't_. Her reasons are different from other women’s reasons, but she knows it’s the absolute truth.

She can't and won't think of continuing a pregnancy as long as Shepherd's still out there and plotting; she doesn't know how Weller's not _completely_ lost his mind over the idea of Allie giving birth while Sandstorm still exists.

She supposes it's different for him; it's always different for the men. It doesn’t hurt that Allie’s more than halfway across the country, in somewhat safer conditions, not actively fighting Sandstorm. 

If she could, she'd call Allie and talk it over, but there's no need. She'll call her later, days after, and tell her that she's the goddamn bravest of all of them and hang up before Allie can start asking pesky, probing questions.

The clinic's familiar, in that she's been there once before. It still looks the same. When she was sixteen, she spent an interminable three hours there, staring at the gray walls and determined faces. She'd been the one in the waiting room, her cousin the one telling the doctor that she just can't do it, but she's been there before.

She knows what kind of people they are – kind, patient, understanding. They won't judge. The receptionist and the nurses and the doctor will ask all of the right questions and none of the wrong ones. It'll be "how far along do you think you are?" and "what drug allergies do you have?", purely medical.

They won't ask her why or how she could be so careless or a thousand other questions she'd already asked herself. 

They also won't ask her what the father thinks about it, and she's glad, because she won't let herself think of Reade and what he'd say. She can't put that burden on him and ask him to have an opinion, not now, not when she knows what she has to do. If they were a team of five, if he or Roman were field ready, it might be an actual conversation that she'd be willing to have, but they're not.

Truthfully, if they were a team of five, and he or Roman were field ready, it wouldn’t even be a conversation. She'd be having this baby, whether or not he was on board and standing beside her. She also knows it wouldn't be a question, he'd be 110% on board. 

This time, Jane's the one in the waiting room, full of nerves. Jane's the one that will drive them home, and Jane's the one that will hold her hand again when it's time to take the pills. Jane's the one that will sit with her and wait for it to be over, watching her carefully for problems. Jane's the one to hug her and tell her that she made the only decision she could and that they'll all still love her, that they're still family. Jane's the one that will keep her mouth shut and keep their secrets safe. After all, that's why Tasha had chosen to ask her for help instead of Patterson; Jane's good at secret keeping when the cause is good.

She doesn't exactly tell Jane the truth beforehand. At first, it's a casual 'so, you have plans? It's Friday night, let's do something together'. It's a vague explanation, a 'I've not been feeling well, there's this doctor I know that keeps late hours, it's nothing I want to bother the Bureau medics with, can I spend the weekend with you, will you help me?'.

They sit in the SUV outside the clinic for fifteen minutes, Tasha frozen in her seat before she finds the nerve to tell Jane that she's pregnant and won't be later if they go in and that they have to go in. She doesn't mention Reade; Jane never asks about the father or why Tasha had turned to her for help instead of her proclaimed best friend.

When they go in, hand in hand, it's Jane that's the more nervous of the two of them.

When they leave, it's Jane who wraps her in a hug and won't let go. It's Jane who cries. Tasha never asks why; she's too scared to. Allie's the brave one, after all.

Later that weekend, when Roman wants to know what's going on, why Tasha's so pale and sick, why Jane's so worried and keeps apologizing for their mother, they don't exactly tell him the truth. He wouldn't understand. He mostly doesn't understand why he and Jane are the ones looking after her, instead of Reade. Tasha gives him a wan smile and tells him that while he doesn't understand, Reade would understand too much. 

That following Monday, during Weller's weekly 'rallying the troops' speech where he tries to keep them focused and motivated enough to handle the horrors the week will throw at them, he mentions that Nas is facing jail time, and they shouldn't forget what she'd sacrificed in this fight with Sandstorm. He mentions that most of them have sacrificed something in this fight with Sandstorm.

She'd correct him if she dared. They've _all_ sacrificed something now. Jane, her life as she knew it, her body as she knew it, her brother as she knew him, her fiancé. Patterson, her tooth and her trust and her love. Weller, his hopes and dreams of Taylor, his belief in right vs. wrong and no shades of gray. The ones that aren't there, the ones that had been there back before Tasha was just one of four, their freedoms and their health and their careers and their lives in one case.

And her? She's sacrificed the least, something she'd never really wanted until she couldn't have it, never dreamed of, something not even the size of a poppy seed. She's sacrificed the most, something that's part her and part Reade and totally perfect and very much wanted. She's sacrificed. 

But despite that, Tasha will never regret that night.


End file.
